


Over The Hill

by Duck_Life



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Comics)
Genre: Alcohol, Domestic, F/M, Fluff, Humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-08
Updated: 2015-09-08
Packaged: 2018-04-19 19:04:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 743
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4757528
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Duck_Life/pseuds/Duck_Life
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dawn and Xander attempt to end their early retirement from fighting the powers of darkness- just as long as they can still get to bed at a reasonable hour.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Over The Hill

“I still feel bad for cancelling on Buffy,” Xander admits, leaning against the counter and cupping his hands around a Darth Vader coffee mug. “I… I just can’t do two parties in one weekend. It’s too much. Man was not made for that kind of strain.”

“No, I totally know what you mean,” says Dawn, grabbing dishes from the drying rack and trying to remember which cabinets they go in. “I’m tired of going out. You know what sounds good?”

“Lying in bed.”

“Nick at Nite.”

“Eight hours of sleep.”

 “Clean socks.” Dawn frowns. “Are we getting old?”

“Dawn, you’re nineteen.”

“And last week I went on a fifteen-minute rant about how Facebook is ruining our ability to communicate with our friends like _people_ ,” she says, worriedly organizing silverware. “Oh my God. I think I used the word ‘newfangled’. We’re _geezers_.”

“Hey, speak for yourself,” he says. “I’m young at heart.”

“Right. That’s why you threw the remote control at the TV yesterday.”

“You know what?” he snaps, gesticulating wildly with his mug. “Cable doesn’t need to be that complicated. _And_ , and, why are there so many extra channels? You know? I mean, I’m changing channels, I’m flipping through the thing, you know? And I have to go through HD-NBC-ESPN-BYOB whatever-the-hell just to get to TV Land.” He pauses. “Dawnie, we’re _old_.”

“No, no, no we’re not,” she says, sliding the last pan into place and marching around the cramped kitchen with purpose. “We’re fun. We’re hip. We’re wild.” She grabs a bottle of whiskey out of the liquor cabinet and grins mischievously before dumping a gratuitous amount into Xander’s mug. “We’re awesome. We drink our coffee Irish.”

Xander looks mournfully down into his drink. “That was chamomile tea.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, my throat was kind of scratchy from… trying to yell over the music in that club last night.”

“Right.”

“Damn.” He sets the ruined tea on the counter. “You think there’s a cure?”

“We could do something ridiculous. We could get matching tattoos.”

“Or,” he says with mock enthusiasm, “if we wanna do something a little more sensible, we could start the first traveling circus to perform in space.”

“Okay,” Dawn says, pulling her hair back in a bun. “I got it. We wanna get our blood pumping again?” She smirks. “Let’s go tangle with the guys who can’t.”

Xander gapes. “You wanna go fight vampires?” he says. “At this hour?”

“It’ll be like old times.”

“God, I hope not.”

“You _know_ you’d have fun,” she says, and it’s sort of the final nail in the coffin. Grinning at him, she takes a victory sip from the Vader mug. “Oh, God. That’s awful. That is awful.”

“What weapons do we have?”

Exactly seven and a half minutes later, they’ve assembled their entire arsenal on the kitchen counter: a bat.

“We can do better than this, Xan,” Dawn says, glaring at the offending sports equipment. “Think outside the box.”

Nine minutes and seventeen seconds after _that_ , they manage to do marginally better. Spread out on the counter are an assortment of wooden spoons, the bat, Dawn’s cross-bedecked leggings, an old boombox, and a jar of couscous.

“Boombox?”

“You ever see _Lost Boys_?” Xander says, grinning. “Death by radio. Couscous?”

“It’s garlicky.”

“Are you gonna wear the leggings?” His one visible eyebrow raises suggestively.

“ _Ha_. I can’t run in those. But I figured, hey, they have crosses on them. We could, like, throw them at the vampires.”

“You’re a genius,” he says, kissing her impulsively.  “And, hey, I figured we could use the wooden spoons as stakes. We might need to sharpen the ends.”

“Okay,” Dawn nods, “but let’s save one so we can still make pasta.”

“Got it,” he says, sticking one back in a drawer. The rest he collects and tosses into a backpack along with the couscous. Dawn grabs the bat and the leggings. The boombox gets left behind.

“We’re not old,” she says, taking another swig of the whiskey-tea. “Ugh. Bleurgh. Keep this away from me.”

“Let’s go get our slay on,” Xander says, “and return here at a reasonable hour because I have to go to work in the morning.”

“YEAH,” Dawn says, going for one last ill-advised drink out of the Darth Vader mug. Armed and, well, not quite dangerous, they step out the door. Into the sunlight. “Oh yeah,” Dawn says. “It’s like 5 PM.”

“You wanna make some more tea and watch CSI?”

“I love you.” 


End file.
